Tracy
by Princess Pinky
Summary: Set directly after the events of "Nevermore," Myka tells Pete about her sister, Tracy, and explains why she led him to believe that she was an only child.


**A/N: **So everyone thought Myka was an only child (yay for retconning) and now even Pete knows about Tracy so well that he knows exactly who she is when the audience doesn't? Smells like a fanfic to me! This takes place after "Nevermore."

_**Tracy**_

Pete sauntered up to Myka's room and lingered in the doorway, watching as Myka searched for something in her top drawer. On one hand, he was perfectly content to continue standing and watching her until she noticed him, but on the other, he didn't want to scare her when she turned around, or have her think he was perving or something, so he finally broke the silence. "I thought you said you were an only child?"

Myka Bering jumped at the thought. With her hand pressed to her chest, just below her throat, she turned to see Pete in her doorway. "Pete! You scared me half to death!"

"Sorry," he chuckled as he crossed the threshold into her room, aiming for her bed, but didn't sit down.

Myka watched his movements curiously, then slowly folded her arms into one another and leaned gently against her open drawer, careful not to lean too much to close it. "What makes you think I'm not?"

"I saw a picture at your dad's store," Pete admitted. "Your mom said it was of you and your sister."

"_Tracy," _Myka nodded, her voice wistful like a forgotten summer's eve.

"Younger or older?" he asked. What he _really_ wanted to ask was what happened to her, but he didn't want to push Myka into telling him something she wasn't ready to divulge, and clearly she wasn't, otherwise he figured she would have been upfront from the beginning.

"Older." Myka looked down at her bare feet, with unpainted toenails.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" he edged. "When I-"

"I didn't lie to you, if that's what you're getting at." She still wasn't meeting his gaze or even looking at anything other than her bland toes. "When I told you it was just me: it was. Is."

"But it hasn't always been," Pete surmised.

"No, but you already know that." Myka sighed and looked up again, with an almost liquefied sheen to her eyes. But when she blinked, it was gone. "Tracy was…Tracy was everything I'm not: beautiful, girly, social, brilliant-"

"You're brilliant," Pete interrupted automatically. "You protected the President!" he pointed out, with a bit more lively enthusiasm than he'd originally intended. "And look at what we do now. That's not something they just give to any old shmoe off the street, ya know."

Myka shook her head, the compliment seemingly lost on her. "The point is, she was amazing: made my parents proud in ways I never could."

"Why not?" Pete scratched his head. "I thought - and please correct me if I'm wrong here - but I got the impression that…that you're dad, uh, that he didn't…"

"Like me because I was a girl?"

"I wouldn't have put it quite like that."

"But that's the crux of it, isn't it? And yes, your impression was correct."

"Then how can you say that Tracy-"

"Tracy was the firstborn. Naturally, my dad wanted a boy, but he was okay with a girl as his firstborn, because he figured there was still time to have a boy: a girl and boy, the ideal American family, you know? He could still have a daughter and then later have a boy to carry on the family name."

"But you were a girl too?"

"Yeah," Myka whispered. "And worse then that, my mom had complications during her pregnancy with me. She…she couldn't have anymore children after me. I was the single biggest disappointment in his life."

Pete nodded understandingly. "And that's why you spent every day trying to be the boy he always wanted."

"Yeah. While Tracy grew up playing with dolls and Barbies and makeup and pom-pomps, I devoted my life to Dad and the bookstore. I worked _so hard _at trying to be the son he always wanted. I became the Anti-Tracy and I think he hated me even more for that."

"Your dad loves you, Myka. You both proved that tonight. You're his life!"

Myka nodded. "Yeah, I know…and even though we came to a long overdue understanding tonight…I'll just never be that boy, you know?"

Pete sat down on the edge of her bed and patted the mattress beside him. He smiled sympathetically when she came over and sat down. He instinctively encircled her waist with his arm and pulled her into the crook of his body. "Who cares if you're not that boy?" he asked rhetorically. "You're his Myka! That's better than anything that he could ever possibly hope for."

Myka leaned her head onto his shoulder and sniffled a bit. "He wrote that in his book, you know." Her voice wavered like a flame in a storm. "About me being his life."

Pete squeezed his arm a little tighter around her waist. "But?"

"But only after Tracy…only after she died. 'Everything from this point on would be _for her, for his daughter. She was his life. His only job now was keeping her safe._'" Myka wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as the words from her father's unpublished novel resonated in her head. "It happened her senior year," she explained softly. "Just a few days into Winter Break, four days before Christmas…she was riding back home from some last minute shopping with a friend, it was late, and a drunk driver didn't bother to pay attention to the stop sign. He hit the passenger side dead on."

Pete wound his other arm around her as her voice cracked. He tried to steady her as she shook against him, plagued by a memory that she didn't even have. "It's okay," he hushed.

Myka shook her head against his chest, her sobs growing by the moment. "The car spun out onto black ice," she whispered. "It spun off an embankment and flipped. They said…th-th-they said that maybe, if - if it hadn't flipped, she might have been able to be saved…but her neck was snapped in the-"

"_Shhh…"_ Pete whispered. _"I'm sorry."_ He closed his eyes and slid his hands into her curls, cradling the back of her head. He felt terrible, knowing that if he hadn't brought it up, she wouldn't be reliving the pain of the loss.

Myka found herself wrapping her arms around Pete's waist, just for something sold and warm and _real _to hold onto. She'd mourned in her own way when Tracy had died, but ultimately she'd locked it up and tried to throw away the key, mostly for her grief stricken parents. But her father's near death just hours earlier had torn open the carefully knitted scar and now there seemed to be no end in sight for the tears.

For Pete, it seemed like hours before the echoing sobs fell to ached whimpers and before the whimpers turned to intermittent body quivers and finally for the quivers to lapse into dull sleep. His back was aching from sitting for so long, with Myka's weight pressed against him, but he didn't want to wake her up again. As stealthily as possible, he eased them backwards onto the bed.

With Myka still clinging to him, he knew he wouldn't be leaving her room all night, and just when he'd uncomfortably settled in for sleep, he felt her squirm and unconsciously place her head on his chest, with her hands pressed together as if she were praying and tucked neatly underneath her chin like an innocent child. Silently, he tucked one hand underneath his head in place of a pillow and then stretched his freed arm a few times, before he worked it around Myka's shoulders protectively. "Sweet dreams, Myka."


End file.
